MFA Ukraine drafts several options for canceling Treaty on Friendship with Russia

According to the ministry's spokesperson, the final decision is to be made by the country's president.

Photo from UNIAN

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine has prepared a number of proposals concerning the Treaty on Friendship, Cooperation and Partnership between Ukraine and Russia, including ones envisaging the document's partial or complete suspension.

"The Foreign Ministry has prepared a number of proposals and completed an analysis on a possible suspension of the Treaty, either partial or complete. Both international law and the Treaty itself allow this. That is, it is possible to suspend as a whole or in part, or denounce it. That is, there are several options," a spokesperson for the foreign ministry, Marianna Betsa, has told UNIAN.

She said that Ukraine "following the aggression does not take part in the meetings of the CIS highest bodies". "And we always proceeded from the fact that our goal is to withdraw from the CIS. This is a post-Soviet model that has exhausted itself," she said, adding that, indeed, there are a number of multilateral agreements that are important to Ukraine, such as the ones on social and retirement benefits.

UNIAN memo. The Treaty on Friendship, cooperation and partnership between Ukraine and Russia, also known as the "Big Treaty", was signed by the presidents of the two countries on May 31, 1997.

The parties formally recognized each other's borders and consolidated the principles of strategic partnership and respect for territorial integrity.

Following the Crimea annexation and the start of the Donbas conflict, repeated calls were made to terminate the Treaty over Russia's violation of Ukraine's territorial integrity.

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